Balancing music, college and family with a juggler's skill

Kim Taylor is not content with a single dream. Her desire
to live off her musical endeavors has largely been fulfilled with a
steady stream of physical and digital releases (the latest being the
gorgeously sparse Little Miracle) and the required supporting gigs, an increased profile from advantageous song placements on television shows (including One Tree Hill, Eli Stone and
many others), frequent appearances with friends Over the Rhine as a backing
vocalist/tour opener and her recently signed Revlon contract that will
place a song from Little Miracle in an upcoming ad campaign.

Taylor’s musical accomplishments have allowed the
Cincinnati-based Indie Folk singer/songwriter to begin realizing her
other goal — becoming a scientist. Taylor’s University of Cincinnati
studies will ultimately require her to don a lab coat rather than strap
on a guitar.

“I love science so I decided to torture myself and get a
science degree,” Taylor says over herbal tea at Sitwell’s. “I have this
dream of being a working scientist and then in the evenings, at the
campfire, working on music.”

Taylor’s new career path shouldn’t concern fans of her
darkly meditative Folk Pop, short-story songs. She’s not abandoning her
songwriting and performing activities; her musical conviction runs like
a river through Little Miracle.

“I learned from (the 2008 EP) Greatest Story what works best for me vocally and I learned a lot from (producer) Mike Deneen,” Taylor says. “I tried to bring that to Little Miracle. I
like how broken down it is, and the organ and piano pairing and that it
feels almost unfinished. I didn’t go to New York intending to make a
record. I go there two or three times a year to my friend’s studio to
write, and I ended up making enough songs that I was like, ‘Why don’t I
put out a record?’ ”

The September physical issue of Little Miracle
came well after the album’s digital release last December; Taylor’s
reduced touring emphasis due to school and home life proportionally
decreased the need for actual discs at the merch table. But the
prospect of out-of-town gigs showed Taylor the wisdom of having a disc
for promoters, media outlets and after-show sales.

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“I didn’t even want to release a hard copy, but I can’t tour at
all if I don’t do a press campaign. So we did a deal with this company
that’ll do a small batch (of CDs) at a time.”

The aptly titled Little Miracle packs a metric ton
of emotion and reflection into nine powerful and relatively spartan
tracks. The album’s stripped-back atmosphere was definitely a
premeditated element when Taylor began the album process.

“I was more involved with this one,” Taylor says. “With (2009 full-length) Fading Light,
I wrote the songs when I was on the road with Over the Rhine, then went
straight into the studio with my friend Jimi (Zhivago) and I felt kind
of confused and lost in the process. On this one, I knew what I was
doing. I knew I wanted it to be stripped down. I have a limited amount
of production skill and I wanted to do what I felt I could do. All the
instrumentation was myself and Jimi.”

Little Miracle could easily describe how Taylor
even has a music career. The native Floridian turned church choir and
piano lessons into a performing career at 18, ultimately leading to her
Cincinnati relocation, where she continued to write and perform. She
met OTR’s Karin Bergquist and Linford Detweiler, resumed her English
studies and met her future husband.

After her son’s birth, Taylor felt disconnected from her
muse and gave up songwriting, but the very act of letting it go
unexpectedly revived it. A dozen years and nearly as many releases
later, Taylor is writing for herself, maintaining a sustainable living
and attempting to write (and co-write) songs specifically for other
artists. Little miracle, indeed.

“I’ve always had a hard time with music in that I’ve
never wanted it to be just about me,” says Taylor. “I like being the
backdrop, and songwriting is what’s taking off for me, so it’s nice
that I can do it as a day job and have the science work. I love with
college that I have a project I can complete it and it’s done. Music is
never like that. Creatively, you’re always having to stay open to
channel a new song. I think I needed something to keep my feet on the
ground, emotionally.”

As Taylor navigates her career, her songs are
increasingly influenced by direct daily experiences. Given her English
Lit background (she left UC as a junior when she simultaneously became
disenchanted with the program and found out she was pregnant with her
son) and her early desire to write short stories, it’s natural that her
narrative songs are steered by her life.

“There’s been a lot of personal upheaval and I tend to
write about that crap,” says Taylor with a laugh. “Unless I’m really
interested in the subject matter, it’s like pulling teeth to write
about it. ‘Fruit of My Labor’ is about my uncle, who was a Mexican
migrant laborer. It was something I knew about and I always wanted to
write a song for him and about him. He doesn’t do migrant work anymore
but his brothers do. It’s a hard culture to escape.”

The most moving example of personal upheaval and being
engaged in her subject matter is on the album’s title track, written by
Taylor for good friend Lisa Kenney, mother of slain SCPA student Esme
Kenney.

“I was part of all the people who went to court with
her,” says Taylor, in a somber moment, referring to Kenney’s confessed
murderer’s trial. “That was definitely in my brain, the tragedy of
that, and I wanted to write a song for her.”

When Taylor completes her studies, she’ll be one of the
first in her family to actually finish college (“We’re entrepreneurs,
not college people,” she says) and she anticipates finding a practical
application for her degree. She’s also confident that her music career
will continue, altered slightly by scheduling constraints but renewed
by new, unique life experiences.

“I think with Indie musicians, it’s totally normal to
feel like you could be a scientist and also have a successful Rock band
or records that do well,” Taylor says. “As much as I enjoy songwriting,
there are so many other things I want to do. I think it will feed my
songs down the road.”